Tag Archives: internet

Around my twelfth year of life, I discovered the internet. Downloading, chatrooms, games, you name it. The biggest social media names I lunged myself into were Facebook and Youtube, among other small ones such as Habbo, MyYearbook, etc. After realizing how fun having an online personality was, I started creating more accounts for different sites. Some sites I never even used (such as Ficly, Uinvue, svpply). Looking back, I’d say I signed up for all those accounts just to have my name pop up on the google search. I thought that was beyond cool. I never really considered the implications until now.

That’s not to say I wasn’t aware of safety on the internet; privacy settings weren’t always a big deal to me up until I reached high school and my french teacher started following me on Twitter. He’s a pretty genuine guy, and he was definitely one of my favorite people – so I didn’t want him to think I was careless and foolish when it came to internet privacy. I refrained from tweeting obscene things, with the occasional f-bomb here and there. Rarely anything questionable. There was one tweet about a Filipino family, however…

No matter, I knew it was time to start stepping up my game; keeping my mind clean and my tweets cleaner. During the summer after high school, my friends would always say really obscene things. Things I can’t even bare to repeat. I would always say “Man, I wish I could tweet that!” to which they’d reply, “Why can’t you?” and my answer always being “because Mr. Patterson is still following me on Twitter.” They always said that I’m not in high school anymore, it doesn’t matter what I say because no one can get me in trouble. In a sense, I almost believed that… until I reached this course. What we’ve been talking about has really opened my eyes, even more so, to helping me realize how prevalent I am on social media. Those years of signing up for random accounts has finally given me an end result. Now I’ve got to go back and pick up the mess I made.

I understand that being widespread all over the internet can be a bad thing, but I think it really helps get your name out as well. As for me, I’ve definitely put myself out there; Twitter being my most popular search result. My first step in improving my “digital footprint” would be to finally delete all those null social media accounts. They’re not hurting me, but they’re also not helping me. At all. I feel like they’re completely redundant; by deactivating unused accounts, it would be me more incentive to focus on the big ones that I use, like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Youtube, and StumbleUpon. I think this step would be effective in the sense that when someone of important and relevance to me searches my name on google, the results that come up aren’t a bunch of accounts with my name, my pictures, and nothing else. If you’re going to put yourself out there, you should really put yourself out there.

Second step: clean yourself up! If I’m going to be putting my mainly-used social networks where everyone can get at them, keep it classy! There are few things worse in this world than unfortunate Facebook posts. It’s a small step, but a useful one. Always mediate not only what you’re putting on, but what you’re friends are saying too. Just the other day, one of my old friends thought she was being funny and nostalgic by posting a quote from a movie we had watched together in grade 8. The quote (extremely offensive and distasteful, even more so in context) was funny when I was 13. I thought it was hilarious, but now I just think it’s immature and rude. People change, as should your facebook etiquette. You can’t always control what is posted, but you can choose if it shows up on your profile. So naturally, I deleted her post… I feel kind of mean, though. I didn’t tell her and now she probably thinks I hate her.

My last, and seemingly most important step is knowing what to post, when to post. Have you ever found yourself in a fit of rage, sitting at your keyboard thinking about all the interesting things you could subtweet about someone? (Subtweet being the latest in Twitter lingo). It’s interesting how little people care about who’s listening when they’re angry or upset; it’s almost as if rage knows no bounds. So while I’m sitting at the computer thinking “if I tweet this, and she sees it, she’ll know I’m angry and I’ll feel better about the situation”. All I have to say to that is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3y3QoFnqZc. You think your subtweet is necessary and clever, but I can bet you anything it’s not as great as you think. And it’s definitely not doing you any favors. So, my biggest thing I need to work on is keeping the same general mindset when putting my thoughts into the twittersphere. I may not have that great of a filter when it comes to speaking in person, but I believe I can improve my habits a bit better when everything isn’t so real-time.

As a whole, online branding is important. Letting people know who you are before they even meet you. People can’t get to know you in a social media environment if every site they look up doesn’t have anything past your sign up information – my advice, if you’re not using it, delete it! Go back later if you feel it’s of higher relevance to your life. With the sites that you are using, don’t let them be contaminated with the unfortunate postings of the “old friend who is stuck in grade 8”. You’re growing up, you’re maturing, let your online profile follow. Meanwhile, make sure you’re posting the right thing. While it looks bad on you for people to see inappropriate posts of friends, it’s worse coming from you. There’s a time and place for your raw, unfiltered rants about how much of a “douche bag Jimi is”, unfortunately… Twitter is not the place. Brand on, my friends.

It’s pretty obvious how social media can impact a business. Thinking about how potent social networking is on our personal lives, it can do wonders for the business world. If you’ve ever seen the ad for SmartWater with Jennifer Aniston, it pretty much depicts what it takes to go viral on the internet. A pretty smart commercial idea, if you ask me.

Where I am going with this the fact that social media is huge. It affects, I’d say, everyone, in some way or another. I’ve picked three articles from three different sites, and with each I’m trying to really enforce my position on how critical social media is in this day and age. We take it so lightly, especially at this point in our lives but what we don’t realize is how open we’ve become… with everyone. From a business perspective, that can be pretty harsh.

So I went to the site Mashable and I found this article, titled College Admissions Advice to Students: Think Now, Tweet Later written by Andrea Smith. It essentially talks about how the things we put on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr, etc. are readily available to whoever wants to see them… and it’s post secondary institutes that are looking. We put so much effort into applying for college and university; trying to make ourselves looks professional and 100% desirable to the best colleges/universities there are. It’s almost the same as applying for a job – you want to get hired so you’ll put “Lead a committee for environmental clean-up” instead of what it actually was, which was “picked up garbage around the school yard in grade eight”. I mean, seriously… We want to look good. So why is it that people make Twitter updates talking about how drunk they got last night? Or how “Tiffany is SUCH a b*****!”? They say it’s vulgarity and misconduct that really turn off employers and post secondary schools from accepting you. I don’t think people consider the things they post before they post them. If you’re tweeting “look at this awesome drunk picture from last friday!” and it’s a picture of you and your friends urinating in a bush… where does your professional credibility go? The same place you should’ve been instead of the bush…

This really puts it into perspective how, especially in a business world, it is essential to remain professional even in your personal doings. If you were the CEO of Apple and you were tweeting “smoking bongs with the boys.” how do you think your followers would take that? Not well, I would assume. It’s always smart to keep yourself composed and professional on social media, especially with it being so influential. No matter if you’re 45 and running a business to if you’re 18 and getting high in your parents basement. Have your fun, just keep it away from where everyone can get at it.

Next site was Social Media Explorer, with an article titled Becoming a Social Business Isn’t Just for Social Media, written by Ilana Rabinowitz. A quote I found interesting from the article was “For those of us who are deeply involved in social media, it’s hard to imagine that there are businesses still questioning the value of it… becoming adept at social media means learning principles that can assure survival of a business in challenging times.” This blog entry talks about how businesses are (and should be) using social media to their advantage. With the influential nature of social media, businesses are finding it more and more useful to be more proficient in that field. Social Media, especially these days, can really impact how successful a business is and that is, in most ways, a positive. After giving it a litte thought, however, I’ve also concluded that it can cause a lot of damage. It says in the article “The new openness has most significantly affected the way businesses need to operate.” which basically means that our world is becoming more and more social media-based and in order to survive on a professional level, we need to adapt to these changes. A business that is in tune with what’s currently happening on the internet will probably do a lot better than one that is still living in the 50s, so to speak.

The last one I checked out was called Facebook Makes Big Push To Educate New Users On Privacy, Adds In-Line Controls to Sign Up Flowwritten by Josh Costine on TechCrunch. This blog article talked about how Facebook is really trying to get their users to realize how easily the privacy settings are set now. Before, it was such a hassle to make sure your parents didn’t see those crazy photos you took last night, or that status update with the F word that you were hoping your grandmother wouldn’t read. They really want their users to see how user-friendly they’ve become in terms of privacy, and how simple it is. With the new addition to setting your privacy as soon as you set up your Facebook account, the users will realize how user-based they really are… or appear to be. In my mind, this is definitely a tactic to get more people to use the site. They more they see that Facebook is doing everything it can to ensure your privacy, the more they’ll trust in it and use it. Pretty clever. In the world of business, I believe this is a smart move for Facebook. Like I said with the first article, teenagers especially aren’t watching what they’re putting on the internet – and I believe that’s brought on by a hint of apathy. They don’t care what is posted because “it’s their life” and “they can do what they want”. By providing this new feature, Facebook has in turn given those very people the chance to continue what they are doing – but in a “safer” environment. If you don’t have to worry about your boss seeing you go to the bathroom in a bush, why not let the world know? If you find it funny, I’m sure someone else will too.

In summary, my main point is how essential social media has become from a business perspective. Not only how important it is, but how easily it affects business and the people in the business. Whether you’re 17 year old, still in high school, applying to Queen’s University and tweeting about how many shots it took for you to end up sleeping beside the toilet, or starting up a business and trying to find the best methods of improving yourself, or even a huge business that is looking to figuratively pull your users back in, we all need to realize the potency of social media and how we can use it to our advantage in a professional manner. No matter what you do, who you are, or where you’re going – social media is extraordinarily prevalent at this moment in time and will help shape who you become later on. Practice safe tweeting.